832 research outputs found
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Quantifying the value of ecosystem services: a case study of honeybee pollination in the UK
There is concern that insect pollinators, such as honey bees, are currently declining in abundance, and are under serious threat from environmental changes such as habitat loss and climate change; the use of pesticides in intensive agriculture, and emerging diseases. This paper aims to evaluate how much public support there would be in preventing further decline to maintain the current number of bee colonies in the UK. The contingent valuation method (CVM) was used to obtain the willingness to pay (WTP) for a theoretical pollinator protection policy. Respondents were asked whether they would be WTP to support such a policy and how much would they pay? Results show that the mean WTP to support the bee protection policy was ÂŁ1.37/week/household. Based on there being 24.9 million households in the UK, this is equivalent to ÂŁ1.77 billion per year. This total value can show the importance of maintaining the overall pollination service to policy makers. We compare this total with estimates obtained using a simple market valuation of pollination for the UK
The declining representativeness of the British party system, and why it matters
In a recent article, Michael Laver has explained âWhy Vote-Seeking Parties May Make Voters Miserableâ. His model shows that, while ideological convergence may boost congruence between governments and the median voter, it can reduce congruence between the party system and the electorate as a whole. Specifically, convergence can increase the mean distance between voters and their nearest party. In this article we show that this captures the reality of todayâs British party system. Policy scale placements in British Election Studies from 1987 to 2010 confirm that the pronounced convergence during the past decade has left the Conservatives and Labour closer together than would be optimal in terms of minimising the policy distance between the average voter and the nearest major party. We go on to demonstrate that this comes at a cost. Respondents who perceive themselves as further away from one of the major parties in the system tend to score lower on satisfaction with democracy. In short, vote-seeking parties have left the British party system less representative of the ideological diversity in the electorate, and thus made at least some British voters miserable
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Taking roles in interdisciplinary collaborations: Reflections on working in post-ELSI spaces in the UK synthetic biology community
Based on criticism of the âethical, legal and social implicationsâ (ELSI) paradigm, researchers in science and technology studies (STS) have begun to create and move into âpost-ELSIâ spaces. In this paper, we pool our experiences of working towards collaborative practices with colleagues in engineering and science disciplines in the f eld of synthetic biology. We identify a number of dif erent roles that we have taken, been assumed to take, or have had foisted upon us as we have sought to develop postELSI practices. We argue that the post-ELSI situation is characterised by the demands placed on STS researchers and other social scientists to f uctuate between roles as contexts shift in terms of power relations, af ective tenor, and across space and over time. This leads us to posit four orientations for post-ELSI collaborative practices that could help establish more fruitful negotiations around these roles
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Making Sense of Family Deaths in Urban Senegal: Diversities, Contexts, and Comparisons
Despite calls for cross-cultural research, Minority world perspectives still dominate death and bereavement studies, emphasizing individualized emotions and neglecting contextual diversities. In research concerned with contemporary African societies, on the other hand, death and loss are generally subsumed within concerns about AIDS or poverty, with little attention paid to the emotional and personal significance of a death. Here, we draw on interactionist sociology to present major themes from a qualitative study of family deaths in urban Senegal, theoretically framed through the duality of meanings-in-context. Such themes included family and community as support and motivation; religious beliefs and practices as frameworks for solace and (regulatory) meaning; and material circumstances as these are intrinsically bound up with emotions. Although we identify the experience of (embodied, emotional) pain as a common response across Minority and Majority worlds, we also explore significant divergencies, varying according to localized contexts and broader power dynamics
Europeanising advisory expertise: The role of 'independent, objective and transparent' scientific advice in agri-biotech regulation
Since various crises of food safety in the European Union (EU), institutional reforms have been designed to regain public confidence in regulatory decisions and their expert basis. By Europeanising advisory expertise, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA) was also meant to help harmonise 'science-based regulation' and thus facilitate EU decisions. In evaluating agri-biotech products during 2003-2005, however, the EFSA procedure extended previous expert disagreements rather than overcome them. EFSA was designed to demonstrate that expert advice would be 'independent, objective and transparent�; yet tensions arose between expert experience versus independence, between transparency versus objectivity, and between harmonisation versus precaution. These conflicts have been shaped by the dominant problem-diagnosis, which favours a narrow expert consensus within a specific policy view. Alternative problem-diagnoses suggest that expertise should instead be pluralised, so that norms and uncertainties become more explicit. Pressure for EU reform manifests tensions between the dominant and alternative problem-diagnoses
Conservation must capitalise on climateâs moment
The health of the natural environment has never been a greater concern, but attention to biodiversity loss is being eclipsed by the climate crisis. We argue that conservationists must seize the agenda to put biodiversity at the heart of climate policy
Messing with nature? Exploring public perceptions of geoengineering in the UK
Anthropogenic influence on the climate â and possible societal responses to it â offers a unique window through which to examine the way people think about and relate to the natural world. This paper reports data from four, one-day deliberative workshops conducted with members of the UK public during early 2012. The workshops focused on geoengineering â the deliberate, large-scale manipulation of the planetary environment â as one of three possible responses to climate change (alongside mitigation and adaptation). Here, we explore one of the most pervasive and wide-ranging themes to emerge from the workshops: whether geoengineering represented an unprecedented human intervention into ânatureâ, and what the moral consequences of this might be. Using the concept of âmessing with natureâ as an analytical lens, we explore public perceptions of geoengineering. We also reflect on why âmessing with natureâ was such a focal point for debate and disagreement, and whether the prospect of geoengineering may reveal new dimensions to the way that people think about the natural world, and their relationship to it
âInteractive Technology Assessmentâ and Beyond: the Field Trial of Genetically Modified Grapevines at INRA-Colmar
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